Wednesday, February 27, 2008

There are few opportunities for a husband to actually make his wife hotter. Usually wives are in control of their own hotness - and this is a good thing. If guys did control hotness, the malls would overflow with blond, rail-thin women with unnaturally large breasts...

Never mind.

As I was saying, the average husband cannot change his wife's hotness. I, however, stumbled upon a way to make my wife so hot that even the blond, rail-thin women at the mall must rest their huge breasts on a food court table for a moment and recognize just how hot my wife is.

How did I do it? I bought my wife a Wonder Woman belt buckle.

I have no doubt that the geeks among my readers have already begun to nod their heads affirmatively. Many of these geeks, in fact, have begun to look for their near mint copies of Wonder Woman #1 and might already be fondling their Wonder Woman action figures.

My wife, though, didn't comprehend the power of the Wonder Woman belt buckle when I first brought it home last summer from the San Diego Comic-Con. She wouldn't even wear the red,white, blue and yellow buckle for months.

I don't blame her. My wife is fighting a fashion war. Just taking my kids to school forces her to run a gauntlet of Lexus cars, Louis Vuitton handbags and Jimmy Choo pumps. She fights her own specialized super villains at that elementary school every day.

For instance, there's I Wear Nothing But Coach Woman, who sports a Coach handbag, Coach shoes, Coach sunglasses and, one suspects, Coach panties. I've never seen Coach panties but I assume they're brown and have Cs all over them.

There's also Always on the Cell Phone Lass and her matching Dooney and Burke cell phone case. I can't decide what her mutant power is, but I know it involves unlimited minutes. And there's the villainous Two Face of elementary mothers - Daytime Clothes But Nighttime Makeup Woman. She has great taste in clothes but slathers on the makeup like bridesmaid who has a prom after the wedding.

It took some convincing but my wife finally strapped on the Double W logo of the Amazonian Princess. Her first stop? The elementary school.

"How did it go?" I asked her a couple days later.

"Everyone loved my belt buckle," she answered with a smile.

"How could you tell?" I asked. "Did any of the women say anything?"

"Not really," Bridget replied. "But do you remember Different Designer Dress Every Day Chick?"

"Definitely," I answered.

"The next day she wore a Supergirl shirt."

No matter. If Different Designer Dress Every Day Chick had any fashion sense whatsoever, she would have gone with Power Girl and not Super Girl. And if she does wise up, it still won't matter. I'm buying more stuff for my wife - and not even Versace can beat a Spider-Woman t-shirt.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

I say this with love in my heart, but no matter how painful, I must say it:

If we are to stop e-mail spam in our lifetime, our mothers must be prevented from using e-mail.

Admit it. You have dozens of cute bunny pictures on your computer. Your mother sent every one of them. And the pictures of kittens saying stuff like "I can haz cheezburger?" It's not your fault. You haz a mudder. And she sends you spam.

This mom spam...this spom...it's worse than regular spam. Gmail and Outlook can stop regular e-mail spam by blocking future e-mails sent from a spamming account. But spom circumvents normal spam defenses because it's sent by someone you trust. It's sent by your mom. And for some reason, she hates you. Why else would she send this:

Every single person on the Internet knows that e-mails like the one above are fake. Except your mom.

And my mom. My mother is literally half blind and needs help doing anything except the most rudimentary things on her computer. But if she gets a fake spam e-mail about a missing 13 year-old girl who can only be found if everyone circulates her picture on the Internet, my mother suddenly becomes Sandra Bullock in "The Net". Suddenly, she can e-mail every single person on her contact list without any help and, if she wants to, take down the "grid" - whatever that is.

"People who did not forward this picture to at least five people died mysteriously...."

How do we stop spom? As I mentioned, we can't block our mothers' e-mail addresses. We'd have to start phoning them again. And no one wants that, not even our mothers.

So, what can we do to make our grown mothers think twice before sending us e-mail? What can we do to make their fingers hesitate before clicking "send" on anything but the most urgent e-mails?

Friday, February 01, 2008

Here comes the Super Bowl. I can see the preparations. Millions of eager families are buying new televisions and stockpiling salty snacks. Millions of husbands roll down the supermarket aisles and stop to buy the "good" beer. Millions of wives plan to make teeming plates of nachos.

None of these people will invite my family to their Super Bowl party. None. And it's all my son Gabriel's fault.

He's a chip licker.

Prior to having kids, my wife and scored many invitations to Super Bowl parties. Neither of us really watches football, but we attended the parties anyway. I enjoyed both the strategic and athletic elements of the game. But mostly, I enjoyed the free food and alcohol.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoyed the fashion and rooted for teams based on their uniform colors. She usually sat to the side saying stuff like,"Ooooh! That team is wearing white uniforms. That's so bold!"

Here's something I learned about my wife. Anytime she uses the word "bold" in a conversation,that means she's enjoying the free alcohol, too.

All of this crushed to a stop the first time we took Gabriel to a Super Bowl party. A close friend of ours hosted this particular party. Our son was maybe two years old. The party went well enough for about an hour, until we noticed people making odd faces as they ate chips.

Everyone eyed my two year-old son standing near one of the chip bowls. He fished a hand down into the bowl and snaked one chip from the bottom. He eyed it curiously and then licked it clean of Ranch seasoning, like a cat cleaning its paws.

And then he put the chip back in the bowl and grabbed another.

"Now, that's bold," I wanted to say.

We were not invited back the next year. And word apparently got out about our chip-licking son because we haven't been invited to a Super Bowl party since. No one invites us to Mexican restaurants either.

We hope to attend another Super Bowl party someday, but the odds - and our kids - are stacked against us. Yesterday morning, I opened a box of six glazed donuts on our kitchen counter. There was one small, neat bite taken out of every donut. I looked around to see my five year-old son Julian smiling at me. I think I cursed out loud.